http://lakeweedatarrowhead.net/17sameru.htm
I believe that God doesn’t have different criteria or rules for homosexuals than He
does for heterosexuals. Love is Love and He allows and wants all His children to have that Love in their lives and to have the opportunity to share their lives with someone they are attracted to, be it someone of the opposite sex or the same sex. Most everybody [including people of straight, bisexual, and gay orientations (1)] needs to be loved and to have someone to love him or her back, therefore in that framework I believe that same-sex love is the spiritual and moral equivalent of opposite-sex love for heterosexuals. Homosexual acts, therefore, are not to be evaluated in isolation, or viewed simply as categories of behavior to be approved or condemned. Rather, they must be considered contextually, in terms of the quality of the relationship they express. They must be judged, in other words, by precisely the same criteria that are applied to their heterosexual counterparts: whether (or to what extent) they are genuinely consensual and non-exploitative . . .characterized by mutual commitment, faithfulness and intended permanence. (2)
The Roman Catholic Doctrine and Our Response
And even though Catholics sometimes understand that homosexuality is not a choice and morally neutral in and of itself, they still shout to the world that "Homosexual persons are called to chastity" but the truth is that celibacy (chastity) is a special and rare gift and God is not so cruel to demand gays or lesbians to be celibate anymore than he expects straights to be celibate. Remember that their Priests are supposed to be celibate too, and look how that has worked out, ha-ha. It is hardly realistic to expect that all gays and lesbians who would follow Christ are capable of accepting the discipline of life long emotional and erotic abstinence and, moreover, that it is anything but compassionate to demand of them, as evangelical theologian Helmut Thielicke puts it, "a degree of harshness and rigor which one would never think of demanding" of heterosexual Christians. As Bruce Bawer writes in A Place At The Table, "What kind of compassion is it . . . that leaves the object of that compassion no means of living honorably with his situation other than that of leading a tortured, empty, loveless life? . . . Gay Christians simply cannot conceive of a God who would bless them with the ability to love and yet demand that they spend their lives alone." (3) And for those of you who feel that heterosexual marriage is an option for homosexuals, click Here.
And I concur. The God that I love and worship doesn't require homosexuals to live a life without the satisfaction and fulfillment of romantic love. And He definitely wouldn't deny to the homosexual the basic human need to experience sex and sexual intimacy any more than He would deny that experience to the heterosexual because as the term implies, these needs when they are met, make up the foundation of good physical and mental health. Remember that there is much more at stake in such lifelong celibacy than mere sexual abstinence. Also to be renounced is the entire complex web of intimacy, self-revelation, mutual help, familiar connection and emotional union which make up the coupled state. And for most people, it is in the context of the coupled state that the individual's natural tendency to selfishness is whittled away and supplanted by a focus on the needs of others in the day to day reality of marriage and family life. Denying gays and lesbians the possibility of such coupled intimacy, cuts them off from a key means of God's transforming work in the human heart. (4)
The Fallacy of Love the Sinner, but Hate the Sin or Hate the Sin, But Love the Sinner
Continuing with this line of thought brings us to another danger lurking in the doctrine of a majority of conservative evangelical Christian churches, all fundamentalist and charismatic Christian Churches and the Catholic Church in particular (Click Here and you will see listed the names of the ever growing number of Gay Friendly Churches [5,301 churches at the end of December, 2008] in the United States under the heading "Fifth Reason"). And that is “Oh, we very much love the homosexual, but we hate the sin.” or "Jesus loves you and so do we, as long as you don't love someone of the same sex." That is so against everything that Jesus himself taught in terms of the ideas and attitudes He expressed and the life He lived because it is so cruel and hateful. First of all, homosexuality is not a sin and therefore it is not "one of the results of the Fall of man". Two people of the same sex can live in a committed, monogamous, loving relationship with the blessing of God because none of the Bible Verses which talk about same-sex sexual behavior deal with that issue, as I have pointed out throughout this website. The writers of the Bible had no concept of long term committed, monogamous, loving relationships between two men or two women.
I agree completely with My former Pastor*, the Reverend Dr. Laurence Keene [Christian Church-Disciples of Christ], when he says the following in the documentary, For The Bible Tells Me So, "My theological belief is that all loving relationships are honored by God. I do not believe that the Bible speaks against loving committed homosexual relationships."
And secondly, remember that homosexual couples are simply two people who love each other. The first couple who were married on June 16, 2008 when marriage for homosexuals became temporarily legal in California were two women in their 80’s, Phyllis Lyon, 84, and Del Martin, 87, who had been together for 55 years - and the subsequent 18,000 plus homosexual marriages that took place for the 4 and a half months (from June 16, 2008 to November 4, 2008) that they were legal speak to the same testimony - of couples, men or women who have been together for decades and now want to make it legal and official. Aren’t these clear indications that these pairs are together because they love each other, and are not temporary flings by people driven by lust looking for unbridled sexual pleasure? Love that is the real thing can never be wrong. [I hated the accordion, ha-ha]
Won't They Ever Give Up Trying to Cause Us More Misery?
Another point in regards to celibacy that seems to show that these Legalistic Christians fundamentally refuse to take gay people and their lives seriously is that many of them like the Roman Catholics say that there is nothing wrong with being attracted to your own sex, but it is a sin to act on it. They say that the celibate lifestyle for the homosexual is necessary because it is his or her call to "costly discipleship" for a true homosexual Christian. Whoa! In other words these people are saying that God allows people to be born with (or through circumstances beyond their control to acquire) homosexual feelings, but they're never supposed to act on them. That comes across as meaning that, "it's ok for us heterosexuals to act on our attractions, but not you". Another implication of what they say is that for homosexuals, God meant for them to spend their lives in loneliness and despair, never to experience romantic love with someone they are attracted to and want to share their lives with. They seem to think that Genesis 2:18 (NLT) [And the Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a companion who will help him] applies to only heterosexuals. To limit the meaning of "companion" to woman or the opposite sex is to me, intellectually dishonest. It is such attitudes that lead gay young people to give up on life completely and commit suicide, because they see no hope or love in their futures, the exact same feelings that Bobby Griffith expressed in his diaries before he jumped off that bridge. And these are the young people that this Website is dedicated to.
And attempts to make a moral distinction between the homosexual condition and the specific acts that flow from and express that condition are only well-meaning casuistry or religious rationalization. As Bruce Bawer puts it in A Place At The Table: To recognize homosexual orientation as naturally occurring and morally neutral, while insisting that acting upon that orientation is, in every instance and without exception, abnormal, unnatural, and perverse, makes no sense. If homosexual "behavior" comes as naturally to gays as heterosexual "behavior" comes to straight people, then how can heterosexual sex in marriage be seen as a blessing, a virtue, and a force for good, while homosexual sex within a committed, long-term relationship be seen as an evil, deviant urge that must be resisted? (5)
And remember that five times in Genesis 1 it says that “God saw that it was good” after each of the principle stages of His creation of Man and his universe. If God created us and if everything he created is good, how can a gay person be guilty of being anything more than what God created him or her to be?
Immoral Homosexual Agenda? Immoral Gay Agenda?
Why is it that when the Anti-Gay Religious Right voices their spiritual values, they call them a “Christian Moral Vision,” whereas when we voice our spiritual values, they call them an “Immoral Homosexual or Gay Agenda”? Watch out when they start using the phrase, "gay agenda", because these are same homophobes that say that the anti-discrimination and hate crime laws that are in place to protect the vulnerable members of the LGBT community are giving us "special rights". Those code phrases, "gay agenda" and "special rights" just mean that these loonies believe that all us in the LGBT community "choose" our sexual orientation. Actually these people choose their religious beliefs over all the evidence accumulated since the Holy Bible was written, information that God has lovingly provided us. Nobody, least of all me, wakes up one morning and thinks, "I have a great idea, I think I'd like to become a member of a detested minority." Hello! So their belief structure is built on sand, instead of rock - religious doctrine instead of science, respected medical opinion and just everyday God-given common sense, observation and experience.
And you know, to me it is their "values" which have the ring of a man-made agenda since God never intended that His Message to all of us be so twisted in such an unloving way. In fact, some have likened the Anti-Gay Agenda to the Homophobic Agenda. [Continue reading below for more thoughts on the Homophobic Agenda.] As I understand it, the heterosexual and the homosexual agenda is wrapped up into what is quoted at least nine times (6) in the Old and New Testaments: Love your neighbor as yourself. Nowhere does is say or imply, "love your neighbor, unless he or she happens to be homosexual.(7)"
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